Links to the Present: July 3rd, 2012

Just a few links today…nothing hot off the presses. A little on Sonny Weems; he’s an extremely athletic, yet undersized small forward. Turning 26 next week, he played in three NBA seasons, racking up 2800 minutes and an 11 PER. Last year, he suited-up for Lithuanian power-house, Zalgiris, helping lead them to a Lithuanian League championship. In fifteen Euroleague games, his team-leading 15.5 points per game were somewhat marred by his three turnovers. Based on the numbers at 82games.com and some anecdotal research, his defense appears as much maligned; in 1400 minutes in 2010 – 2011, he managed to block only two shots. Anyways, he is better than Joey Graham or Mychel Thompson, the free agent small forward additions of the last two summers. I am still hoping that the front office brings Derrick Brown to Ohio.

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The Cavaliers have about $20 million available in salary-cap space to spend in free agency. Don’t expect them to spend much of it. They’ll take a frugal approach to free agency this summer, even though they have several holes to fill. The free-agent class is comparatively weak. There are few good, young stars on the market. (Bob Finnan)

Cleveland has made it known that it hopes to bring back SF Alonzo Gee, who was one of the best bargains ($880,000) in the league last season, averaging 10.6 points and 5.1 rebounds. So it’s a bit of a surprise that, according to Sam Amico of FoxSports.com, the Cavs are showing interest in Raptors SF Sonny Weems. Weems, 25, averaged 9.2 points and 2.8 rebounds a game with Toronto two seasons ago, and is a restricted free agent after playing in Lithuania during the 2011-12 season. One has to believe that if the Cavs can come to terms with Gee, their pursuit of Weems could end. (Joe Kaiser)

26 Responses to “Links to the Present: July 3rd, 2012”

Correct me if i’m wrong, but if Toronto splurges on Steve Nash, Cleveland could possibly get Ilyasova at a reasonable price, right? Our frontcourt rotation could get congested, though, as Ersan and Andy should both be playing 30+ minutes a game, while Tristan and Tyler need time to develop with the starting backcourt.

Would any 3-big lineups work on both ends of the court, given our relative dearth of SF’s? For instance maybe Andy and the opposing team’s center sub out, Tristan and Zeller come in for the Cavs?

Speaking of SF’s, if Casspi and Gee still can’t shoot over 35% from 3 next season, are lineups with Andy, Tristan, and Casspi/Gee viable on offense, or is it going to be crucial to pick up Ilyasova or Spot-Up Shooter X in order to have a functional offense for 48 minutes?

Also, is it bad if no one in our frontcourt of the future can defend an NBA center?

Also, the more i think about it, Alonzo Gee shooting at least 35-37% on 3’s this season would really be a good thing in all ways. Please? I hope you’re working on that corner 3 right now.

If Ilyasova’s smart, he’ll take a wait and see approach, as he’ll be a nice consolation prize for teams that don’t pick up the premiere free agents they want (Dallas, New Jersey, Portland, etc.). If he comes to Cleveland, I think he has to play the 3 for 14 or so minutes a night, which would give 120 minutes to divvy up between Varajao, Thompson, Zeller, and Ilyasova, with a bit of scrub time left over which is about right. Ilyasova has the range to play there, and The Cavs could play zone if they were real worried about it. I can’t see him being worse than Casspi there. As for Weems, 15 minutes a night between the 2 and 3 sounds about right. If they sign Ilyasova, the Cavs will be one of the best rebounding teams in the league, especially on the O-Boards.

Nathan, you don’t need 3 players on the quart who are good at threes if you have otherwise good players. the Thunder rarely had more than two guys who were good at three’s on the quart at a time, and the heat more or less never did. Boston pretty much never does. I think we’ll be fine with Andy and TT on the court together, or with Zeller especially since he does have range, and Gee, as long as Waiters develops his 3 and two out of He, Kyrie, or Gibson are on the court. Will it be Ideal? No, everything never is, but it can certainly be a high performing offense.

As far as Gee goes, he would have hit 35+% last year if he made 4 more out of 137 shots. While obviously hitting 35% is a good thing, I don’t think 4 shots in 60 games qualifies superlatives like “really good in all ways”

I don’t want Ilyasova. He’s not much on defense, and we just drafted our stretch big, who happens to play a position better suited to the cavs roster than Ilyasova. Ersan is going to make too much money to justify our need for him, I’d rather save the money to spend on a stud and/or a player in a position of more need (SF). If we could get him for <$4mil a year, sure, but its not gonna happen.

Matt, my concern isn’t 3’s in particular, I also lump in the ability to post up and score, or score on the pick-and-pop (Zeller, hopefully). Right now, it seems like we have no centers or forwards who can do any of these things, which i think was part of the reason the Cavs struggled to find offense so often last season.

I’m worried that right now, we have a lot of players who are at their best slashing to the basket (Andy, Tristan, and Gee, Kyrie & Waiters to some extent), and need players who can create other kinds of offense. With Jamison and Parker gone, I just fear the Cavs could be too one-dimensional offensively next season unless they add at least one more player who can stretch the court.

Nathan, we added two more players who can stretch the court, Dion (47.5% from 17ft to the college 3 pt line, 36.2% from 3) and Zeller (a good jump shooter who just wasn’t asked to do it much by UNC, but performed well in limited attempts and shot 80% from the line)

Also, last season our offense really didn’t look that bad (even with jamison’s highly questionable shot selection and holes at the 2-3) until Verajoa went down. TT with one more year should be better in the post (he better be) and add in Waiters and Zeller, and I think we’ll be doing quite well to replace jamison and Parker (who was downright awful last year). Even if somehow they manage to screw up and they don’t, thats still a years experience and getting better, along with Kyrie and Tristan. We don’t need to be as good as possible next year, we need to be as good as possible in the next 2 -8 years, and we would do well to be patient this year and not make any moves to jeopardize that.

Andy actually did pretty well on the pick and pop last year, and the Cavs drafted Zeller to do the same. Not many players in the league score that frequently in the post up, and Ersan is definitely not one of them. Hopefully TT becomes one, but regardless, missing that aspect of offense doesn’t we make a panic move and overpay a middling player who also doesn’t post up.

“Also, is it bad if no one in our frontcourt of the future can defend an NBA center?”
How many legit centers are in the NBA these days? I count 3 or 4. I don’t see why that should be a huge concern. If anything, the league is trending away from offensively skilled big men (or bigs in general). Besides, Andy can do fine.

Also, i don’t see why people are saying SF is more of a need than PF. Yes, we obviously need a SF (although less of one if we can keep Gee), but we only have 1 PF. I know everybody always says Andy is more of a PF than a C, but i expect the vast majority of his minutes will come at center, with a rotation of him and Zeller. Which leaves our list of PF’s as…..TT. And that’s it. Or that Jones dude, but i know absolutely nothing about him.

Matt, I may have overstated my case, especially since both of our draft picks plug holes nicely offensively. I guess SF is a much more pressing concern positionally, in my opinion, especially since we need a guy who can guard the big athletic wings, while being competent enough offensively to play 30 minutes a game. This could be Gee, if he continues to improve, but I still see him as a “solid 7th-8th man on a contender” kind of player, and not necessarily a long-term starter.

I’m a big fan of the San Antonio “Let’s accumulate a ton of cheap high-efficiency scorers and destroy everything (until we suddenly lose 4 straight to the Thunder)!” philosophy, and I guess Ersan (while he fits as a high-efficiency scorer) puts too big a limitation on our long-term financial flexibility. Also, he’d be eating up the minutes of Zeller, Tristan, and Kevin Jones, who really need to see 25, 25, and 15 minutes a game this season, in my opinion, to develop properly.

If we do pick up another wing this season, I’ll settle for a spot up shooter who can play average-good defense on a 6’5″-6’8″ perimeter threat, and of course, who won’t break the bank.

I still think Ersan is the lesser of several possible evils we could splurge on this summer, but I have to agree with you that signing him now, when it’s not even clear what player we need yet, would be too hasty a move in a game the Cavs have played carefully to get to their current position.

How about Robin Lopez as a a rotation big man? I know the Suns already made a qualifying offer and he’s a slightly less than dreadful option at center but think of the possibilities… the sheer volume of curly moptop in the paint in a Lopez/Varejao tandem would utterly overwhelm other teams… wow its a slow day.

Reports that the Cavs are interested in B. Roy and also Chris Wright from GSW. Wright has a nice PER in limited minutes. I love these kind of signings for the Cavs. Under the radar bench guys on other teams who are young, cheap and have some real potential. Oh, and I’m not crazy about the Roy rumors but I don’t see him signing with us regardless…

Kevin Jones is not too bad of a shooter and might see some time as a scoring 4. His shot selection was the cause for his declining 3 pt% last year at WV,where he tried to do too much. If he was taken at #33 as some mocks thought people would be more excited about him. he may have slipped out of the draft because he stopped doing workouts after receiving an unfulfilled promise from an NBA team to draft him.

I am loving all these huge contracts going out to undeserving players. Hibbert Max? Batum 50 over 4? The cavs need to hold on to all that space and sign some short contracts for 3-6 million so we can package them off at the deadline or next summer when the luxary tax kicks in to teams bleeding cash

For the record, I said “Zeller, Tristan, and Kevin Jones.” Zeller is only bigger by 2 inches and 15 pounds, which is even less significant when you realize how well Ilyasova cleans the glass, and how similar their games are.

As for “no one in our frontcourt of the future can defend an NBA center,” I’m talking about Tristan and Zeller (and Ilyasova is we add him), not Varejao, and I may be wrong about Zeller. I agree that there aren’t a lot of dangerous centers around anymore, but Howard, Bynum, Monroe, Oden (kidding, kidding), Horford, and The Brow will all be in their primes or close to it during the Cav’s hypothetical championship window, and the prospect of facing them with Tristan as our best post defender scares me to varying degrees.

Our frontcourt rotation (196 minutes) should look something like Varejao (35) Tristan (25) Tyler (25) Jones (15), with the remaining 6 minutes eaten up by a scrub, or shuffled around between those 4. We could get another power forward, but he would either have to play 10 minutes a game, or start cutting into the playing time of our youngsters, and it isn’t worth signing another contract to do that.

As for Kevin Jones, he’s 2 inches short of falling in the late teens this year…at 6’8″ and not a great leaper, he just can’t defend a good NBA power forward. On offense, however, he scored 20 points per game on 51% shooting (78% from the line) with only 1.3 turnovers a game. If the Cavs can bring him in at the right times, when our opponent is playing small-ball, or when he can guard a non-scorer at PF, I think he could be a useful part of our rotation.

Alternatively, he could play the 3 with two defensive beasts in Andy and Tristan covering him (this would also be a beastly rebounding lineup, Jones averaged 11/game last year). Also, I’m a WVU fan and it’s probably showing.

“I agree that there aren’t a lot of dangerous centers around anymore, but Howard, Bynum, Monroe, Oden (kidding, kidding), Horford, and The Brow will all be in their primes or close to it during the Cav’s hypothetical championship window, and the prospect of facing them with Tristan as our best post defender scares me to varying degrees.”

Yeah, but the Brow isn’t really an offensively skilled player (at this point, at least) and Horford and Monroe aren’t very big. I think Zeller and TT could absolutely handle those two.

Cranky M,
To further support your point; at some point over the next 2 – 4 years, Cleveland has multiple opportunities to add a big 7-footer. A player like Festus Ezeli was available late in the first round this year and may turn into a totally capable back-up seven-footer. Roy Hibbert was drafted 17th. Kendrick Perkins 27th. Marc Gasol 48th. The Cavs have a lot of draft picks and cap space; it’s not like Zeller and TT are the end of the front-court-of-the-future.

At the time i expressed my concern, I was talking about the world in which the Cavs complete their frontcourt rotation by signing Ilyasova (another player who’s not quite capable of handling a post-up big). And after watching the Thunder self-destruct in large part thanks to Kendrick Perkins, I’m happy for the Cavs to bide their time and wait for a truly capable low-post center to come along, or even not get one at all.

We do not need players like Ilyasova right now. He is the type of player that at best puts us into the Atlanta Hawks range of “play-off team but not championship team.” I would HATE to be in that position. Ilyasova is not a true difference maker or a star, he is a piece at bet that just clogs our big man rotation. He is not athletic enough to consistently get minutes at the three so he would take minutes from most likely Zeller (because Ersan would play the 4 pushing Tristan to getting more minutes at the 5). Also, haven’t we learned not to give big contracts to guys who have a break-out year during a contract year? Please dont give a bunch of excuses of why this isn’t a break-out year because even is he keeps this up I would rather not sign him and be wrong than sign him and be right! (I hope everyone followed that, lol).

We have 1 more year of drafting high, then I see us making moves. Even though Baron Davis’ contract doesn’t count against our cap, it counts toward our minimum salary requirement. NEXT year is when we will NEED to spend some money. The Cavs have fully bought into the method of building through the draft and just taking some losses along the way. Until we are a player away from winning it all don’t bother falling in love with a free agent thats going to command a salary over 6-7 million per year. it won’t happen.

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Nate Smith is an Associate Editor. He grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, and moved to NE Ohio in 2000. He adopted the Cavs in 2003 and graduated from Kent State in 2009 with a BA in English. He can be contacted at oldseaminer@gmail.com or @oldseaminer on Twitter.

Tom Pestak is an Associate Editor. He's from the west side of Cleveland and lives and (mostly) dies by the success and (mostly) failures of his beloved teams. You can watch his fanaticism during Cavs games @tompestak.

Robert Attenweiler is a Staff Writer. Originally from OH, he's long made his home in NYC where he writes plays and screenplays (www.disgracedproductions.com) some of which end up being about Ohio, basketball or both. He has also written for The Classical and the blog Raising the Cadavalier. You can contact him at rattenweiler@gmail.com or @cadavalier.

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